The present invention relates to a handleless cutting and paring device for fruits and vegetables having several cutters with different shapes formed at different locations for cutting or paring fruits and vegetables without damaging their edible portion while the operation thereof is simple and convenient.
Conventional cutleries or peelers for fruits or vegetables are ususally designed to be used for a single purpose and does not have the desired effect if they are used for any purpose other than that for which they are designed. For instance, a knife in the form of plate is designed to cut something, if it is used to peel fruits or vegetables, it is inevitable to encounter difficulties in operation and performance, such as hurt edible portion, incompletely pared skin, or uneven thickness of peeled skin. On the other hand, a peeler is designed to pare fruits or vegetables instead of being used to cut the same, remove cores or seeds in fruits or vegetables, or scoop out any surface indent on skin of gourds, or rhizomic vegetables. For those rhizomic vegetables having thicker or harder cuticular fibers, such as kohlrabi, turnip, etc., a normal peeler is almost useless.
Under the circumstances, users would have to purchase various kinds of cutters or peelers to meet different needs which obviously increases users' expenses in this aspect. Besides, almost all the conventional cutleries have a handle which not only prevents one end of the cutleries from doing other cutting works but also increases the length and volume of cutleries which in turn causes inconvenience in carrying them. Some of the cutleries have a very sharp blade and tip and must be covered with a sheath which also increases the volume of the cutleries.
For the purpose of explaining the drawbacks of existing fruit or vegetable cutters or peelers, a conventional peeler designed to peel fruit is now used as an example. Referring to FIG. 11A, the conventional peeler includes a peeling portion 3 and a handle 31, and is only suitable for vegetables and fruits having thinner cuticle, such as radish, cucumber, loofah, potato, apple, pear, musk melon, etc. Such peeler does not suitable for scoopling out the core of apple or pear and the inner seeds of musk melon or cucumber, it is neither suitable for paring fruits and vegetables having thicker outer skin, such as orange, grapefruit, kohlrabi, turnip, etc. Therefore, a user must select different cutting means according to different fruits and vegetables; sometimes, it is possible to use several different means to complete the cutting, peeling, scooping, etc. for the same fruit or vegetable and causes so much inconvenience to the user.
The peeling portion 3 of the peeler as shown in FIG. 11A has a generally arcuate cross section. However, to allow for easy forming, blades 32 having a nearly flat cross section as shown in FIG. 11B are normally formed. With such a blade, it is quite possible that some of the edible portion of the fruit or vegetable will be peeled off together with the outer skin. When peeling elongated gourds or rhizomic vegetables, the blade 32 is apt to slide deeper and deeper into the edible portion as shown in FIG. 12 and causes juice to flow out of injured fruits. One of the solutions is to narrow the gap between the blade 32 and the blunt edge 33. However, outer skin peeled off by the peeler might be stuck in this narrow gap and stop the peeling. The user must clear off the stuck peel before he or she can continue the peeling. This is one of the major drawbacks of conventional peelers.
For citrus fruits such as oranges, grape fruits, etc., delicious juice rich with vitamin C is protected by a layer of spongy film. Reticulate veins for carrying nutrient between the spongy film and fruit outer skin make the pulp and skin distinctly separate. Since the skin closely attaches to the surface of pulp, it is not easy to peel off the outer skin of the fruits by hand and fingers (except some types of oranges). Under the circumstances, most people will use a fruit knife to slice the fruit and take out the pulp by hand at the expense of much delicious and nutritious juice.